The ten papers collected in this book are the published result of a conference held at St Andrews in 2007 to examine the trajectory of Roman colonies in the first century after their foundation. In her introduction, the editor Rebecca Sweetman provides some theoretical underpinning to the treatment of colonies, espousing a ‘bottom-up’ approach to the occupants of colonies and focusing on the agency of the indigenous provincials, rather than any perceived dominance of the colonists who might have come to live amongst them. She suggests that no two colonies were alike and argues that change in colonies was often slow and cultural diversity was the norm. Her introduction could have benefited from some brief preface, summarising the various types of colony, the changing motives for their foundations and their geographical, numerical, demographic and chronological characteristics.

The following eight papers are case studies of particular colonies or regions. Given their origin as conference contributions, the papers are qualitatively varied. Korhonen discusses the use of Greek or Latin in Sicilian colonies to good effect. We learn that Greek was predominant in the east, Latin in the west. Greek inscriptions in Syracuse were more common in religious and historical contexts, and the city remained strongly pro-Hellenic through to the Christian period. Many Sicilian colonies must have been essentially bilingual. Edmondson demonstrates how the foundation of Augusta Emerita (Mérida) in Spain in 25 bce, destined to become the administrative centre of a new province, had a negative impact on the fortunes of an earlier and neighbouring colony. Staying in Spain, Jiménez and Camillo draw attention to the fact that colonies themselves could often be imposed on earlier settlements – thus at Córdoba a Republican colony of the second century bce was located near an indigenous oppidum, while an Imperial colony was added to it in the early Empire. From the outset the Republican colony brought together Roman allies, indigenous people and immigrants, with most veterans settled under Augustus.

Moving eastwards across the Adriatic Scotton provides a short but archaeologically detailed paper on the evidence for the first buildings of the Roman colony at Corinth. The minutiae of the arguments concerning the dating evidence, allied to some curious sentence constructions, make it a slightly difficult read. The colony was founded by Caesar in 44 bce, but only really took off in that century's last decade. The fortunes of Corinth seem to have risen as a consequence of its close association with the Imperial cult. Butrint, a colony founded twice, in 44 and 27 bce, is described by Hansen. The original colonists were freedmen and clients of powerful individuals in Rome, and there is evidence of land allotment, in the form of centuriation, south of the city. The foundation of a colony, sometimes involving land confiscation and redistribution, the arrival of new settlers and changes in the influence of local elites were thus often unwelcome phenomena. Staying in Epirus Bowden suggests that the later colonists at Butrint in the Augustan period can be linked to a second phase of centuriation, and that Roman colonists, even in the same settlement, were not a homogeneous category, especially when more than one phase of in-migration was recorded.

In the eastern Mediterranean, Knossos, on the island of Crete, was a Roman colony founded in 27 bce. Baldwin Bowsky looks at the evidence from Italian sigillata stamps, most of which come from Knossos. She concludes that Eastern sigillata replaced its Italian equivalent, and that Knossos remained a predominantly Greek-speaking Aegean city. Further east in Pisidia, Antioch was founded in 25 bce and settled with poor Italian families and veterans. A mixture of coercion and acceptance characterised the relationships between colonists and locals. However, Antioch seemed to run out of colonial steam in the second century ce. Latin inscriptions disappeared and Greek deities and magistracies staged a comeback, amounting to a re-Hellenisation of the city.

The final paper, an overview by Greg Woolf, is magisterially reflective, putting colonies very much in their place. This reviewer suggests that readers of this book should read Sweetman and Woolf first, before tackling the detailed papers. Woolf argues that colonies involved three distinct processes – the redistribution of land, the relocation of people and urbanisation. He points out that almost all the colonies discussed in this volume were created between the conclusion of the Sullan civil war and the end of Augustus's rule. The founding of a colony required a decision by the Senate, and the ideological motives for such changed over time. In a timely reminder Woolf suggests that colonial status was no guarantee of success in the Roman world. Colonies were epiphenomena in the larger process of Roman urbanisation.